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Builders of the Pacific Coast (The Shelter Library of Building Books)
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About Builders Of The Pacific Coast
Product Description A continuation of Lloyd Kahn’s journeys into the creative processes of owner-built homes their innovative techniques, use of sustainable materials, and essential dedication to the natural elements surrounding their designs Builders of the Pacific Coast explores the aesthetics and skills of three master builders in California, Washington state, and the rugged terrain of British Columbia. The three featured craftsmen Lloyd House, Bruce Atkey, and Sun Ray Kelley combine imaginative architecture with innovative contexts: everything from unusual house-boats to sculptural dwellings made of driftwood are included. With stunning color and black-and-white photographs, as well as detailed black-and-white drawings of the homes, this collection of unique and progressive designs creates a template for a future filled with forward-thinking architecture. Review Whether you start with the Book of Genesis or the Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, we humans have long loved tales about creating a new world - or building one from scratch. Lloyd Kahn's new book, Builders of the Pacific Coast, is primarily an account of builders and hand-crafted structures dating from the 60s to the 80s. Yet the rugged coastal setting of his odyssey - a blue and green world from Point Reyes Peninsula to Vancouver Island - invokes a simpler, more pristine time, an Eden of sorts. When forests grew down to the sea, building codes were few, lumber was plentiful (often free) and anyone with skill, a strong back and the courage to try could create something beautiful and enduring. On every page of this book is something shocking and delightful. A boat with legs. A roof like a leaf. A caravan with eyes. A split-cedar woodshed shaped like a bird. Stair rails so sinuous and snakey they might come to life and grab you. Sculpted earth walls. Round windows and arched doors. Roofs curved like seagull wings. Grottos choked with ferns and flowers. Not that there's any shortage of creatures and fantastical characters. Just off-camera lurk orcas, eagles and bears. And then there are the builders themselves. There hasn't been a cast of characters this colorful since Ken Kesey packed up his Underwood. Builders of the Pacific Coast rolls on, mile after mile, in an odyssey so firsthand and vivid that you feel every rut in the road. And come to know, as Lloyd Kahn did, the soul of the place. The strong hands and big hearts of the people, the staggering abundance of the land and sea, the leaping joy that such a place still exists. --Mike Litchfield, West Marin Citizen, October 30, 2008Lloyd Kahn has done it again. This gifted photographer and storyteller has created a beautiful, inspiring and imaginative book about natural human shelter made by ordinary, artful hands. With Builders of the Pacific Coast, Kahn focuses the lens of his camera on the hand built structures he discovered journeying along the Pacific coast north to British Columbia from his home near San Francisco. As with his previous book Shelter, and its sequel "Home Work", Kahn lets the buildings and the builders speak mostly for themselves. These buildings speak of wood and water, broad landscapes and natural elements, and the men and women who integrate these resources and inspirations into shelter and assemblages of natural beauty. While much of the book focuses on homesteads, boats, sculptural buildings of driftwood and stone, and more than forty builders, Kahn gives more than a third of the book to feature the work of three unique builders, Lloyd House, Bruno Atkey and SunRay Kelley. This choice is a wise one, as each of these men has created a body of work worthy of a book or two each. Read Builders of the Pacific Coast just to see what these builders have done with trees. The structures House makes by "... (getting) the bullet out of the gun and then (running) after it to get it to hit the right spot" are a conundrum of simplicity and intricate complex assembly. Kelley's sense o
